Hank is in love with this baby blue knitted blanket.  I can’t remember who got it for us but I really need to get an extra 1 or 2 in case this one comes up missing!!  I’ve tried to replace this blanket with other blankets, but he wants this one!

This blanket and “Fiona” his fox (Fiona was the name she came with!) are his two favorite things when he goes to sleep!  ….And when he wakes up!  If you see this blanket somewhere, please let me know!!!!

well not really, but Pottery Barn’s Anywhere Chair is an expensive piece of furniture!  Regardless, I love the chair and bought Hank one for his FIRST birthday coming up in September!  My baby is growing up! 

Anyways, we got the chair set up and we were in the other room playing when all of us went into our bedroom for something.  We walked into our room and saw this: 

and THIS:

and I think both Tater and I stopped for a minute to figure out who was taking Lefty back to the pound!  As quick as we saw this mess, we looked into the living room to see if our new chair was intact and it was!!!  Lefty just chewed up her bed which was completely fine at this point!  I love my little black dog, so I’m glad she didn’t have to pack her bags and move out! 

Here’s some cute pictures of Hank and his chair.  Which has become more of a jungle gym than a chair!

First, I completely realize that I didn’t post once last week…..  WOW, I am off to a stellar start!  I am going to count this as a post for last week, so hopefully I can catch up this week! 

Today Hank starts his swim lessons and I am nervous!  I decided to put him in the ISR lessons and they are very intensive.  We go every day for 4-6 weeks.  Each lesson is 10 minutes or less.  These lessons are survival lessons and teach him to roll over and float if he should fall into a body of water.  Although we will be with him EVERYTIME he is near water, we are near water all the time.  Also, I think this will give him a head start on swimming and I’m hoping that he will learn to love swimming early! 

Last week, I went and watched about 5 lessons.  If you ever decide to do this program, I would highly recommend that you go and watch a few lessons.  The instructor was great but some of the kids cried at their lessons.  However, I watched a couple 2 1/2 year olds that were able to hold their breath and swim underwater to the side of the pool.  It wasn’t a far distance but it was amazing to see these kids in action.  I talked with a lot of parents and all of them said their kids were more confident in the water and gained respect for the water. 

I will let you know what our experience is with these lessons.

Hank’s “school” had a Fourth of July parade for all the kids.  The older kids brought their bikes and scooters and we took a loop around the park!  Sounds great, huh?  The only issue was the 105 Temperature!  Regardless, we all had a great time! 

The staging area

Hank's ride

So sweet!

I’ve decided to follow Meg’s lead and post twice a week in July.  Crazy, I know!! 

I’ve had so much to talk about but I need to figure out a better way to organize my pictures at home.  Everytime I sit down to write, I want to include pictures and then the simple tasks turns into a big pain! Anyways, a few things on my list to talk about:

1.  Hank’s 4th of July Parade today at his school!

2.  Swim Lessons

3.  I’ve decided to make a quilt

4.  Hank’s about to start walking!

oh  and we have a SECOND BABY on the way!  I figure I should start writing now and get in the habit before Baby 2 gets here and I have a 16month old and a newborn!  So anyways….if you are still following me, this month I’m coming back!

My little Hankster Chicken Gangster (nickname thanks to his aunt Jackie!) is turning 8 months old in 4 days.  Here is some highlights from this past month.  First, Lots of Grandparents came to visit!  

Then, we got Hank a walker and in less than 1 hour, he knew how to get around our house….and pull off the plug protectors!!!  On to plan B…..wait a minute, what is plan B?????  We also need to “baby-proof” our house since Hank is officially a crawler!  This past week, he has really started crawling around.  I am also planning on buying him baby kneepads since our whole house is tile.  Is that weird??

He also has 7 teeth!!  7!!!  They keep popping out!  I can’t believe how fast time has flown by!  Here are some of my other favorite pictures from this month!

Bright and early this morning, we had to take Hank to the hospital to get tubes put in his ears

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The ENT has seen fluid behind his eardrums and recommended that we get tubes. Our main reason to get this done was so he doesn’t have speech delays later on because of this fluid buildup.

This morning went so much better than I expected. We weren’t able to feed Hank after midnight last night and the surgery was scheduled for 7am. So at 11:30pm, I woke him up to give him a bottle to hopefully keep him happy in the morning when he woke up.
This morning came and he woke up very happy. We had no issues with him before the procedure. The procedure took no more than 15 minutes and we were back in recovery. Hank was inconsolable after the surgery and they assured us that this is what happens to baby’s after ansthesia. We finally got him calmed down and we were back home by 8:30am. He has slept most of the day and is getting back to his usual self!

Hank is sitting up by himself!

I will be back to update our blog after I get caught up on my work. I have been swamped! We moved to a new office building at the beginning of March and we have been busy getting our new office up and running in addition to my workload.

But, Hank is doing great and getting very big! Pictures to come…..